Public figure pile-ons...can we be real about our role in them?
right-wing grifters, fragile men, the dreadfully dumb…and us.
It’s a despairing fact of life that if you are a woman (or Indigenous or a member of a minority group) with some kind of public platform or presence then you will cop a public pile-on. Sometimes daily.
I have. Some of you may recall the CocaCola-sponsored personal trainer (they are so often PTs, aren’t they?) David Driscoll who set up fake Twitter accounts to “go after” me. There was the aggressive vegan “Durian Rider” who regularly defaced my books in bookstores and made threatening Youtube videos about me1; the Mamamia-led “croissant gate” incident (and many other bullying episodes); and The Daily Telegraph-led anti-vax smear-fest that led to an entirely unprofessional pile-on by the Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Mail and others2.
They were horribly terrifying and lonely times. But I look back now and realise these have nothing on what plays out today.
You might have caught the pile-on my very good friend Yumi Stynes experienced in recent weeks following the publication of her sex education book for young people. Now, every parent out there can have an opinion on whether they feel such a book is appropriate for their kid. They can then choose to buy it - or not (in the main, 11-year-olds aren’t buying sex-ed books in BigW).
That’s called discerning parenting and the liberal market system doing its thing.
I could bang out a bunch of other caveats and zero-sum takes about the perils of kids learning sex via online porn, and how relevant experts have come out in droves defending the book’s content as responsible, blah blah. But I figure most of you here don’t see worth re-entering such a narrow vortex. (I will, however, include some examples of what Yumi has been sent, as per below, so we can be alive to the reality of what’s going on and, as Yumi puts it, “air the cookers”.)
Instead, let’s cover off a few honest points about pile-ons. Because they are happening under out watch. My ideas start out broad, but build. Stick with me.
Humans are being just so disappointing
If you’re in the public eye and mature enough you do, to a certain extent, know that media attention cuts both ways. You’re fair game, as we’d say in newsrooms. If you’ve frothed to a junior lifestyle reporter for one of those “inside my home” features to promote your latest film, TV show, book etc, then you can’t really bleat when the media sees you as a product and runs a neg’y beat-up down the track. Plus, you do become somewhat hardened to the opinions of strangers and come to rationalise it’s all just fish and chip wrapping tomorrow (although, technology now changes that).
What guts, however, is how disappointing humans are.
It’s fundamentally despairing to see the everyday mum’n’ dad humans who pile on to a media report. And then onto the media report about the pile-on. This shit never gets easier. You open up the accounts of the people writing the vitriol and they are often ordinary folk, with hobbies, who go on picnics and – really very often – claim to be light/wellness/bliss/God lovers. They are also disproportionally personal trainers. They seem so everyday; and sometimes we even share friends. They are people we rely on to keep society ticking along. And yet the force of their spite and hateful fury leaves you worrying where we’ll stand when society legitimately hits skids
Is this us? Is this my fellow species? Am I so naïve to not know that such people exist out there behind their box hedges and under their Goorin Bros caps?
Thinking woman’s crumpet David Brookes just wrote a very long essay for The Atlantic arguing that we are indeed becoming meaner. He cites the stats and then posits that it’s because we are a culture that has not grown up with moral education:
“We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein.”
We can all play a role in bringing back what he calls “moral formulation”. He suggests a bunch of ideas for this that would rely on people like you and I bringing to bear, including: encouraging curiosity as a virtue (not as something that kills cats); mandatory social skills training; integenerational service; and asking questions of each other, like,
What is the ruling passion of your soul? Whom are you responsible to? What are my moral obligations? What will it take for my life to be meaningful? What does it mean to be a good human in today’s world? What are the central issues we need to engage with concerning new technology and human life?
Idealistic, but something we can just do starting now, no?
There have always been vitriolic, small-minded people…but mostly we didn’t meet them
Yumi and I talked this out a bit. Pinnicky, petty types have lurked (and they definitely lurk) in every society. Largely they’d have to keep their putrid thoughts to themselves, or they’d be limited to small over-the-back-fence forums. This is because, mostly, our species don’t like pinicky, putrid pettiness up close. We shut it down - it ruins vibes and is not great from an evolutionary POV.
But now, with (sigh) technology and social media, these people can spread their ugly thoughts far, fast and without the up-close filtering of a neighbours’ shunning. So not only do we have to hear from people we’d not otherwise, these offenders are not undergoing any kind of behaviour-modifying filtering back in their home counties. In other words, there aren’t necessarily more nasty people on the planet, it’s just that they are letting rip more of their nastiness and we all have to hear about it. Plus, their worse tendencies are being enabled and, we now know, actively encouraged by the algorithms.
I do know if Yumi and I met any of our trolls up close, they’d not only lack the courage to say what they sent us online, but I doubt they’d feel even a tenth of the ire that drove them to write what they did3.
So what’s going on? What drives?
Pile-onerers DON’T do their own research
I just interviewed
on Wild who’s published a book about mimetic desire, a theory that says none of us have our own desires, opinions or original tattoos.Instead, we are all - always - copying each other. The mimetic desire theory was developed by French philosopher Rene Girard who has suddenly turned hot with the tech bros (in part because Peter Thiel is very vocal about having been inspired by Girard when he became the first investor in Facebook) and, as the podcast chat shows, it can be used to explain so much of social behaviour today.
Luke talks to me about how mimetic desire explains why and how we get into conflict. It’s not because of our differences, it because we’re all mimicking each other back and forth, adhering to tribal belonging protocols.
So these disappointing humans don’t actually disagree with people like me and Yumi, they’re just…piling on.
Which is actually more disappointing.
But at least it’s an explanation. And armed with it, we can all ask ourselves to what extent our own opinions are really our own or are more about our primal need to adhere to the tribe. And, hopefully, course-correct to something more honest. All of us. Now.
What do you reckon, can you think of some where we (the progressive left) tend to pile-on to an opinion?
Women are scapegoats
Luke also explains that society has long resolved conflict, or fissions of fear, with scapegoats. Since conflict is mostly about pile-ing on (and not real difference in opinion), often the only way to stop the zero-sum spiralling is to turn the pile-on to a sacrificial victim who takes on the “sins of the collective”. What’s interesting to note here is that the scapegoat is often a woman (think Mary Magdalene, witches, Greta T). And they are always the person in a society or tribe who speaks truth to power.
Hello, woman with an opinion!
The opportunity here, for all of us, is to become aware of this very primal patterning…and to rescue scapegoats, call out what’s going on, witness it all.
The “pedo” bait
Scanning the horrible comments Yumi received, it’s clear the dominant insults, buttressed by much profanity, are “pedo” and “groomer”. This is not new or specific to writers of books about sex. And I don’t think those who CAPS LOCK SCREAMED the accusations at Yumi honestly think she is smuggling kids and having sex with them.
The most horrendous crime we can conjure is sexual injury to children. And to call someone a “pedo” is possibly the most potent insult out there. Conspiracies of pedophilia rings and groomer accusations tend to surface when a society is feeling deeply threatened (like during a global pandemic), and none more so than periods in which women experience some sort of gendered gain. The connection has been made many times over, dating back to at least the 12th Century when wild conspiracies spread about Jews killing Christian children and using their blood in rituals.
It was during the 1980s when women were entering the workforce in record numbers and day-care was becoming normalised that conspiracies about kids being smuggled in underground bunkers for sex trade purposes first surfaced. Richard Beck writes about all this in We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s. It was pure moral panic. When the US was faced with the “threat” of a female President, up they popped again (ergo, Pizzagate).
Similarly, what Yumi is copping is entirely gendered (and race-based; as she puts it she’s a “small Asian woman with opinions”, it grates).
A big reason for this “pedo” hysteria right now is the uncertainty being felt all around us. The world feels threatened and threatening from myriad fronts and anything to do with gender is being stigmatised disproportionately (witness the transgender debacle). Gender is deemed the stable entity in times of flux and so conservatives and men grip at traditional notions of it when they feel threatened.
Which brings us to…
Pile-ons: another injury caused by male fragility?
The New York Times and The Atlantic have been tracking the rise in young, mostly right-wing men, or “lost boys”, who are descending to new levels of vile racist and bigoted rhetoric on and offline, highlighting new and worrying “leaders” such as Bronze Age Pervert and a new phenomenon “no enemies to the right”. And, of course Andrew Tate.
They describe a “cultural dynamic” where these men must fight left, liberal ideas and representatives “mainly by trolling on social media or embracing authoritarianism as the based alternative to weak-kneed classical liberalism” because it’s seen as strong, courageous and cool – the opposite of how they perceive the Left.
“Thus, the troll isn’t just a troll; he’s a man. He’s a warrior… So in the name of strength, these young men capitulate until their minds and hearts are warped beyond recognition.”
Yumi estimates 80 per cent of the trolls who’ve gone at her are men, but 100 per cent of the death threats are from men. And PTs are over-represented.
So what’s our role in all of this? I think it’s to be aware of the broader social factors at play when we talk “trolling” or any other worrying issues on the agenda, and to then be conscious of how they might be steering our own (left, right or otherwise) responses to the world.
It’s to start conversations about moral education. To just talk morals! And live by them.
It’s to keep an eye out for scapegoating.
And it’s to continue caring about what is happening with men - why it’s happening, what men need, getting good men to step up and fight for a better, sturdier form of masculinity than what is being role-modelled to young men right now.
(PS…I am aware I have been writing a bit lately about toxic manifestations of masculinity. I do so because I am very worried where it’s heading and how it is impacting the planet and humanity broadly. Masculinity, to be sure, is not toxic. But when it is toxified, it is dangerous…to us all. If I’m frustrated with men specifically, it’s because I feel that more men need to be stepping up and addressing the issue, as our feminist forebears did to dismantle problematic notions of femininity and the feminine in our culture. Young men, in the main, listen to men.)
Do take a moment to listen to the Luke Burgis chat (and please do rate Wild if you get a moment (every ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ zinger helps).
And if you’re keen to support Yumi, check out her latest book (yes, she has just put out another): Five Minute Food Fix.
Sarah xx
He hit headlines a few years back when his girlfriend and accomplice“Freelee” (who claimed to only eat bananas), went public with their abusive relationship. A quick Google of the guy todays reveals 1. multiple dodgy headlines regarding other more recent girlfriends and 2. that a lot of men in the bike riding community continue to flock to his Youtube videos.
The damage this caused took three years for a team of Sydney University Phd students to diffuse. They’d offered to help me after seeing that it was a blatant trolling event. It required repeatedly writing to Wikipedia to block various male vigilantes who wanted to tarnish my reputation. You can read my take on vaccinations and the whole hoo-ha here.
I’ve run this experiment a few times, fronting up to my known online bullies in the street and at events.
This was hard to read. But I persevered because I know you round up discussions Sarah! I found it hard because I find the MEAN-NESS of society crushing. I noticed many years ago that women’s magazines started to turn on us. On their very audience. And women bought into it. And now... the online hate... it’s too much for me!! Good people are doing good things with young men (The Man Cave, Blue Edge) to help cultivate healthy masculinity. My feeling as a mum of a 13 yo boy is it’s a desperate time! I have to grab his attention now or never and steer him towards smart choices. “Good morals” Because so much is out of my hands due to technology.... and the mean-ness creeps in with its insidious stealth. I think kids don’t even realise they’re being mean, they just mimic what they see and hear..... like you have stated.
Thank you once again for a thought provoking article that’s right up my alley dear Sarah. Oh boy. It’s exhausting being a caring human ! 😅💛
Another very important and thought provoking piece...
I was reminded of the latest episode of the Kitchen Cabinet that just aired when you posed the question about the left piling onto an opinion. I don't know if it would be considered a pile on but there was a large number of comments on Annabel Crabb's IG posts of the Peter Dutton episode. So many people said they were not going to watch it and their minds were already made up about what the episode was going to be like without having seen it. It made me think about the lack of curiosity...AC wrote a long post about the upcoming episode and explained her work as a journalist.
When you wrote that there's always been small minded individuals that lurked in society, my mind went to the Child Safe eLearning course I did last night. It was on Child Safe Risk Management Strategy and I saw parallels to dealing with online trolls. There was a lot about changing the environment by taking away hidden, low visibility spaces and building a culture that doesn't tolerate abuse of any nature. It also talked about consequences and having strategies, processes, checks and balances in place. How do we change the environment when this takes place online? What are the consequences for those who practice mean, nasty behaviour online? I think your point about having conversations about morals contribute to changing the culture. You shared in your last video post that other commenters are keeping nasty comments in check on your IG as you have been creating a culture of thoughtful discussions and kindness...do you see this spreading more broadly in the social media landscape?